BBC ON THIS DAY | 12 | 1976: Crime writer Agatha Christie dies About This Site | Text Only 1976: Crime writer Agatha Christie dies The most popular novelist in the world, Dame Agatha Christie, has died leaving rumours of a multi-million pound fortune and a final book waiting to be published. The British author, who sold an estimated 300 million books during her lifetime, had been in poor health for several years. She died at her home in Wallingford in Oxfordshire, aged 85. Two London theatres dimmed their lights this evening - St Martin's where her record-breaking "The Mousetrap" is now in its 24th year and the Savoy, where "Murder at the Vicarage" will have its 200th performance next week. Dame Agatha is believed to have left one last novel, as yet unpublished, featuring one of her most famous characters, the deceptively clever Miss Marple, as well as an autobiography.

Police search During her lifetime, Dame Agatha published 83 books, including novels, romances written under the pseudonym of Mary Westmacott, short stories, poetry and the scripts for her plays. She married Colonel Archibald Christie in 1914. While he was away during the war she worked as a nurse at her local hospital in Torquay, where she learned about the poisons that later featured in so many of her crime novels. Dame Agatha established her name as a crime writer with her first detective book in 1920, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in which she created her much-loved Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. In December 1926 she sparked a police search when her car was found abandoned in a chalk pit at Newlands Corner on the Surrey Downs. It emerged she and her husband had had a row. Several days later she turned up in a hotel in Harrogate booked in under the name of a woman who was revealed to be her husband's mistress. She divorced and married again, well-known archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, and divided her life between several country and town homes, archaeological digs and the regular production of one thriller a year.

She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1971. Newspaper estimates of her fortune vary, but in the late 1950s she was reputed to be earning about �100,000 a year. The hugely successful play Mousetrap - first written as a radio sketch called Three Blind Mice for the 80th birthday of Queen Mary - is said to have made more than �3m. She gave the proceeds to her only grandson, Matthew Prichard. She was known to be a shrewd businesswoman, anxious to avoid leaving too much of her personal fortune to the taxman. She once said: "I only write one book a year now, which is sufficient to give me a good income. If I wrote more, I'd enlarge the finances of the Inland Revenue who would spent it mostly on idiotic things." In 1955 she formed a company, Agatha Christie Ltd and to save its dividends from tax, she later sold 51% to Booker McConnell, a firm best known as sugar giants but also with other investments including authors' copyrights.

Agatha Christie Agatha Christie Location of death: Wallingford, Oxfordshire, England Cause of death: Natural Causes Remains: Buried, St. Mary's Churchyard, Cholsey, Oxfordshire, England Gender: Female Nationality: England Executive summary: Mystery novelist Agatha Christie was a prolific and extremely popular British author and playwright best known for her work in the murder mystery genre. From her first novel in 1920, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, to the reprints of her novels that still appear today, some 30 years after her death, Agatha Christie's works have enjoyed unparalleled success. But while Christie and her favorite characters, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, have become icons of "who dunnit" detective fiction, the scope of Christie's popularity is such that that sales of her books have not only surpassed that of any other mystery writer, but of all other writers of any genre. Not even William Shakespeare has been so widely read. In fact, according to the Guinness Book of World Records over 2 billion copies of her books have sold and her works have been translated into more than 100 languages. Only the Christian Bible has outstripped her in readership.

Many of Christie's works have been translated into film, most notably Murder on the Orient Express (1974). Her short stories, plays, and novels have also been adapted to television, radio, and at least one video game (And Then There Were None, 2005). In addition Christie boasts the longest running play in the world: The Mousetrap, which she originally wrote as a birthday gift for Queen Mary. Christie received numerous honors during her lifetime including the Mystery Writers of America�s Grand Master Award (1955) and the order of Dame Commander of the British Empire (1971). In addition to her more famous mysteries, Christie wrote some lesser known romantic novels under the pen name Mary Westmacott. Agatha Christie was born Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller on September 15, 1890 in Torquay, England. Her father was an American citizen, of modest private income, who home schooled her in mathematics. But when young Agatha was 11 years old he died, and she thereafter began attending regular classes in arithmetic and other subjects. She was an avid reader as well and soon became a great fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle , especially his Sherlock Holmes mystery stories.

Her love of writing surfaced early as well, nurtured both by her mother and by neighboring novelist Eden Philpotts (best known for his Dartmoor series). Of this period Agatha Christie remarked, "For some years I enjoyed myself very much writing stories of unrelieved gloom where most of the characters died." Music and dance had always been an important part of her curriculum. So when Agatha's mother sent her off to Paris a few years later, for further schooling, it was with the hope that Agatha might one day emerge as an opera star. But although she did well in singing and music lessons Agatha developed terrible stage fright, making a career involving any kind of public performance utterly out of the question. After graduation Agatha and her mother embarked on an exciting 3 month tour of Egypt, a very fashionable "wintering" spot for English society of that period. But while other English folk went for the novelty and the chic, young Agatha felt in love with the history and with Middle Eastern ambience. The romance and the mystery of other cultures and of great civilizations long gone intrigued her greatly and became fuel a number of her later books, as well as a life long love of archaeology. But all that was in the distant future.

When she returned to England Agatha found romance and adventure of a different kind. She met and married Archibald Christie, a handsome young Lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery. That same year, 1914, World War I began. And like many other patriotic young women the 24 year old Agatha began volunteering her time for the war effort. She became a nurse at a Red Cross Hospital in Torquay, and eventually she took a post in the dispensary. There she gained an intimate knowledge of pharmaceutical drugs and their preparation and uses -- including their lethal dosages. Meanwhile her love of writing and mysteries still flourished, and she began to think about writing her own novel. In 1916, egged on by her sister Madge, she decided to have a go at it. Setting the interruptions of daily life aside, she checked into the Moorland Hotel in Dartmoor. In just three weeks she managed to crank out her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

The novel debuted her now famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, the quirky yet logical little Poirot who would eventually appear in 39 novels, including his 1975 swan song, Curtain, published shortly before Christie's death. But although finished quickly, the book took nearly four years to find publication. But once the reading public had gotten a taste of Agatha Christie's work, her success as an author was assured. Her second book The Secret Adversary soon followed in 1922, starring lesser known characters Tommy and Tuppence. (Miss Marple would not appear until 1930.) And soon she was publishing at least one book per year -- with nearly everything she produced selling astonishingly well. But life on the home front meanwhile was not so successful. Despite the birth of daughter Rosalind in 1919 and their mutual economic success, the Christies were drifting apart. Eventually, in 1926, Archie admitted he had a mistress and asked for a divorce. The highly sensitive Agatha was crushed. But what followed immediately after has haunted the legend of the great writer ever since.

On the evening of Friday, December 3, 1926, Agatha Christie went upstairs to kiss her daughter goodnight. Then, at 9:45 p.m., she got into car and drove away. Later the vehicle was found abandoned several miles from home, with many of Agatha�s personal belongings strewn about inside. There was no sign of Agatha herself however. Immediately a huge search was mounted, and the case attracted tremendous attention from the media as well as various public figures, including the Home Secretary. As if the line between mystery novel and reality was not blurry enough, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was sought out to consult on the case as was mystery writer and Dorothy L. Sayers . Agatha�s husband Archie meanwhile, who had been away for the weekend with his girlfriend, became the object of tremendous scorn and suspicion, with members of the public alternately conjecturing that he had done his wife in, or driven her to suicide. But 11 days later Agatha Christie was found, alive, at the Harrogate Hydropathic Hotel. Most curious of all, she had registered herself under a name patterned after her husband's mistress.

According to a public statements made by police and family, Agatha was allegedly suffering from amnesia. Agatha herself never commented publicly on the event, and nowhere in her autobiographies is it mentioned. Christie enthusiasts and biographers continue to puzzle over the incident therefore. Was it a publicity stunt to raise book sales, as the police suspected? Or perhaps it was an attempt to embarrass her husband and ruin his weekend tryst with mistress Nancy Neele, as suggested by biographer Jared Cade ( Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days, 1999). There are even those who claim her tale of amnesiac confusion was legitimate, that she�d had a particularly severe nervous breakdown (Agatha Christie: The Finished Portrait, 2006, Dr. Andrew Norman). A fictionalized 1979 film treatment of the subject, Agatha, starring Dustin Hoffman and Vanessa Redgrave even portrayed a confused Christie held virtual prisoner at Harrogate, receiving shock treatments to alter her mental state. Although speculation continues, many believe her novel Unfinished Portrait (1934), written as Mary Westmacott, gives clues to the emotional turmoil she was experiencing prior to her disappearance.

In it a woman writer, remarkably similar to the real life Christie, is driven to the edge of suicide by the shock of her husband�s demand for divorce. In any event, despite remaining together for a time after the scandal, the Christies ultimately divorced in 1928. Several months later Agatha decided to go on a holiday, someplace exotic and foreign. She ended up aboard the Orient Express, headed for the Middle East. But even though the train ride provided fodder and inspiration for her later book, Murder on the Orient Express (1934), her final destination proved dreadfully boring. Arriving at last in Baghdad, Christie soon found herself bogged down in polite English society, and all usual accouterments. She felt that if all she had wanted was to do was play tennis and attend tea parties she could have stayed at home. Christie was aware however that some exciting archaeological work was being done farther south in Iraq, at the site of the biblical city of Ur. And she realized she could escape her implacably English hosts by arranging a visit to the dig site. As it turned out the wife of the chief archaeologist on site was a big fan of Christie's and an extended stay was easy to arrange.

There at last she immersed herself in the exotic foreign world she had come to explore -- strange foods, customs, the bustle of native workers. But as it turned out, watching the ancient past emerge from the sands had a romance all its own. And the intellectual work of archaeology, figuring out the past from clues left behind, was a great deal like detective work. So, although she had to return to England, she eagerly accepted an invitation to return again the following year. When she did, she was assigned a handsome young archaeologist, Max Mallowan, to show her around and explain what had been learned during the year�s excavation. Agatha enjoyed his company as much as she did the tour itself. But of course she was certain he would never be interested in an "old lady" like herself, 14 years his senior. But when a family emergency called Agatha back to England, Max insisted on accompanying her. Six months later they were married. It proved to be the beginning of a life of mutual respect, support, and adventuring with Agatha accompanying Max into the field for excavations as often as possible. She even became the expedition photographer and was a crack hand at cleaning and restoring artifacts.

What's more she loved reconstructing fragments of pottery and other artifacts, likening it to doing a jigsaw puzzle. According to Max, she had a meticulous manner, a keen eye, and seemingly endless patience. Meanwhile she continued to write her novels, with many of her stories inspired by the settings and characters she�d encountered on their travels. The hefty earnings from her books meant she and Max were never short of revenue for their expeditions or any of Max�s other academic forays. But by 1957 Agatha found it more difficult to manage camp life, especially in the rainy season. Indeed she was so plagued by illness that year Max decided to call it quits. They retired from Nimrud and returned to England, where they busied themselves with writing and other projects. In 1968 Max was knighted for services to archaeology, and he was made a trustee of the British Museum in 1973. Agatha, in the meantime, was named the world's best-selling author in the English language (UNESCO, 1961), and was created a Dame Commander of the British Empire (1971). She continued writing of course, and she became increasingly involved with the theater and film.

Before long any play with her name attached became an instant sensation. But on January 12, 1976, Agatha Christie died, following a short illness.She was 86 years old. Max's memoirs, published the following year, cited his feelings of emptiness after 45 years of a loving and creative partnership with Agatha. Nonetheless he did remarry however, in September of 1977 to Barbara Parker, a long time friend and work associate from the excavation at Nimrud. Parker was one of a handful of women with whom he is rumored to have had an affair. Less than a year later, on August 19, 1978, Mallowan himself died. Despite the fact that Max Mallowan was considered one of the premier anthropologists of his day, it is his wife, Agatha Christie Mallowan, which the public best remembers. Although as private, self-effacing and polite as her favorite character, Miss Marple, Dame Agatha made it clear to her readers that a shrewd and creative intelligence could be a thoroughly feminine virtue. Father: Frederick Alvah Miller Mother: Clarissa Boehmer (d.

1926) Husband: Archibald Christie (m. 24-Nov-1914, div. Apr-1928, one daughter) Daughter: Rosalind Hicks (b. 8-May-1919, d. 28-Oct-2004) Husband: Sir Max Mallowan (archaeologist, m. 11-Sep-1930) The Mysterious Disappearance of Agatha Christie by Elizabeth Kerri Mahon Elizabeth Kerri Mahon On December 3, 1926, British mystery author Agatha Christie (1890-1976) disappeared from her home. Her car was found abandoned several miles away, with some of her clothes and identification scattered around inside. There were no signs of foul play, but newspapers immediately reported that the car was believed to have been deliberately run down Newlands corner with its brakes off. Agatha had written several confusing letters before vanishing. One, to her brother-in-law, said she was simply going for a vacation in Yorkshire; another, to the local chief constable, said she feared for her life.

A quarter-mile from where her car was found was a lake called Silent Pool which Agatha used for inspiration for one of her character’s deaths. The police organized fifteen thousand volunteers to search the surrounding countryside. Her husband, Colonel Archie Christie, told reporters that she was suffering from a nervous breakdown, but suspicion was immediately raised that perhaps the Colonel had done away with his wife, like one of the plots in his wife’s mystery novels. Rumors of his infidelity spurred the gossip—and caused police to tap his phone. For eleven days, the nation was riveted as the newspapers speculated about what had happened to the author of The Mystery of Roger Ackroyd. When she was eventually discovered at a spa in Harrogate she claimed to been suffering from temporary amnesia. What led Agatha Christie to leave her home that cold December night? Even today, her biographers differ on what exactly happened during those two weeks in December 1926. By the date of her disappearance, Agatha Christie had published more than ten novels and short stories, each more successful than the last.

Her first book The Mysterious Affair at Styles was finally accepted for publication in 1919, and with it, the world was introduced to Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. 1926 should have been the greatest year of Agatha’s life, because it was the year that tour-de-force The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was published. But instead, it turned into her annus horribilis. 1926 was the year that Agatha’s mother, Clara, died. If that wasn’t bad enough, Agatha was soon hit by another bombshell. Just prior to taking an Italian holiday, her husband Archie told Agatha that after twelve years of marriage, he had fallen in love with another woman, Nancy Neele, and wanted a divorce. Agatha pleaded with Archie to give their marriage another chance, and he reluctantly agreed. On that fateful day in December, Archie had told Agatha he was going to spend the weekend with some friends and would not be coming home. At 9:45 that Friday night, she told her secretary that she was going out, got into the car and drove to Newland Downs, where she left the car.

From there, she walked back into town and caught the train to London. In London, she went shopping for a winter coat and posted a letter to Archie’s brother Campbell, telling him that she was going to a spa in Yorkshire. Then she took a train to Harrogate and checked into the Hydro spa under the name of Theresa Neele. Meanwhile, the police continued looking for her. As time went on, and the police were convinced that it was foul play, the newspaper reports got bigger. Even though Archie’s brother Campbell finally told the police that Agatha had said that she was at a spa in Yorkshire, nobody believed him. Eventually, reporters discovered that Archie had spent the weekend in the country with friends—and in the company of a mysterious woman. Still hiding out at the spa, Agatha placed an advertisement in the London Times that said Mrs. Theresa Neele was interested in getting in touch with her relatives and they could find her at the Hydro in Harrogate. It wasn’t until several of the spa’s patrons noticed the resemblance between their fellow guest Mrs. Neele and the pictures of Agatha in the paper that the mystery was solved.

Archie arrived at the Hydro in Harrogate and issued a statement that Agatha was suffering from amnesia. When the press got wind of the fact that Mrs. Agatha Christie was not dead in a ditch but had been enjoying herself for eleven days at spa in Yorkshire, they were livid. If anyone remembers the outcry after the Runaway Bride in Georgia was found, can imagine what it must have been like in England at the time. The press was immediately suspicious of the Christie’s story that Agatha had amnesia, temporary or otherwise. Not even several statements from doctors who apparently examined Agatha swayed the press and the public. So what really happened? Was it an elaborate publicity stunt to increase sales of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd? Or was it less obvious, that Agatha had simply had an emotional breakdown, and tried a last desperate attempt to save her marriage that backfired? I’m inclined to agree with the latter theory. Christie seems to have been in a fugue state while she was in Harrogate; one part of her mind was aware of what was going on in the newspapers, but another part of her clearly thought she was Mrs. Neele.

No one who was thinking rationally would have come up with such a scheme. If Agatha had been plotting one of her novels, she wouldn’t have left so many holes in the plan. Any chance that Agatha had of repairing her marriage to Archie ended after the incident. The embarrassment and humiliation of being considered a suspect was too much for Archie. The Christies were divorced, and Archie married Nancy Neele. Agatha Christie also remarried, to an archeologist named Max Mallowan, who was fifteen years younger than she. Until her death in 1976, she refused ever to discuss what happened that unhappy December fifty years earlier. Elizabeth Kerri Mahon loves to write about Scandalous Women & the men that loved them. Her first book, Scandalous Women, was published by Perigee Books in March 2011. Visit her at scandalouswoman.blogspot.com .

Agatha Christie - Biography - IMDb Agatha Christie Biography Showing all 57 items Jump to: Overview (4) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (2) | Trade Mark (1) | Trivia (30) | Personal Quotes (19) Overview (4) The Queen of Crime Mini Bio (1) Agatha was born as "Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller" in 1890 to Frederick Alvah Miller and Clara Boehmer. Agatha was of American and British descent, her father being American and her mother British. Her father was a relatively affluent stockbroker. Agatha received home education from early childhood to when she turned 12-years-old in 1902. Her parents taught her how to read, write, perform arithmetic, and play music. Her father died in 1901. Agatha was sent to a girl's school in Torquay, Devon, where she studied from 1902 to 1905. She continued her education in Paris, France from 1905 to 1910. She then returned to her surviving family in England.

As a young adult, Agatha aspired to be a writer and produced a number of unpublished short stories and novels. She submitted them to various publishers and literary magazines, but they were all rejected. Several of these unpublished works were later revised into more successful ones. While still in this point of her life, Agatha sought advise from professional writer Eden Phillpotts (1862-1960). Meanwhile she was searching for a suitable husband and in 1913 accepted a marriage proposal from military officer and pilot-in-training Archibald "Archie" Christie. They married in late 1914. Her married name became "Agatha Christie" and she used it for most of her literary works, including ones created decades following the end of her first marriage. During World War I, Archie Christie was send to fight in the war and Agatha joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment, a British voluntary unit providing field nursing services. She performed unpaid work as a volunteer nurse from 1914 to 1916. Then she was promoted to "apothecaries' assistant" (dispenser), a position which earned her a small salary until the end of the war.

She ended her service in September, 1918. Agatha wrote "The Mysterious Affair at Styles", her debut novel ,in 1916, but was unable to find a publisher for it until 1920. The novel introduced her famous character Hercule Poirot and his supporting characters Inspector Japp and Arthur Hastings. The novel is set in World War I and is one of the few of her works which are connected to a specific time period. Following the end of World War I and their retirement from military life, Agatha and Archie Christie moved to London and settled into civilian life. Their only child Rosalind Margaret Clarissa Christie (1919-2004) was born early in the marriage. Agatha's debut novel was first published in 1920 and turned out to be a hit. It was soon followed by the successful novels "The Secret Adversary" (1922) and "Murder on the Links" (1923) and various short stories. Agatha soon became a celebrated writer. In 1926, Archie Christie announced to Agatha that he had a mistress and that he wanted a divorce.

Agatha took it hard and mysteriously disappeared for a period of 10 days. After an extensive manhunt and much publicity, she was found living under a false name in Yorkshire. She had assumed the last name of Archie's mistress and claimed to have no memory of how she ended up there. The doctors who attended to her determined that she had amnesia. Despite various theories by multiple sources, these 10 days are the most mysterious chapter in Agatha's life. Agatha and Archie divorced in 1928, though she kept the last name Christie. She gained sole custody of her daughter Rosalind. In 1930, Agatha married her second (and last) husband Max Mallowan, a professional archaeologist. They would remain married until her death in 1976.Christie often used places that she was familiar with as settings for her novels and short stories. Her various travels with Max introduced her to locations of the Middle East, and provided inspiration for a number of novels. In 1934, Agatha and Max settled in Winterbrook, Oxfordshire, which served as their main residence until their respective deaths.

During World War II, she served in the pharmacy at the University College Hospital, where she gained additional training about substances used for poisoning cases. She incorporated such knowledge for realistic details in her stories. She became a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1956 and a Dame Commander of the same order in 1971. Her husband was knighted in 1968. They are among the relatively few couples where both members have been honored for their work. Agatha continued writing until 1974, though her health problems affected her writing style. Her memory was problematic for several years and she had trouble remembering the details of her own work, even while she was writing it. Recent researches on her medical condition suggest that she was suffering from Alzheimer's disease or other dementia. She died of natural causes in early 1976.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Dimos I Ntikoudis Spouse (2) ( 24 December 1914 - 1928) (divorced) (1 child) Trade Mark (1) All her books and short stories feature some kind of plot twist or surprising ending Trivia (30) She was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1956 Queen's New Year Honours List and the DBE (Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1971 Queen's New Year Honours List for her services to literature. Wrote several romance novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. Gave birth to a daughter, Rosalind, in 1919. Disappeared for several days in 1926. Disappearance remains unexplained. Interred at Cholsey Churchyard, Cholsey, Oxfordshire, England, UK.

On Saturday April 12th, 1958, her play The Mousetrap, which opened in London on November 25, 1952, became the longest running production of any kind in the history of British Theatre, beating out the five-and-a-half years of Chu Chin Chow. She worked at a chemist's shop between 1915 and 1918 in the seaside resort of Torquay, England. Her father was from the United States, and her mother was English. Over two billion copies of her books have been sold worldwide. Her book sales are surpassed only by the Bible and by William Shakespeare . She is the best-selling author of all time. First novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), was also the first to feature her eccentric Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. Last published novel, Sleeping Murder (1976), featured her other world-famous sleuth, the shrewdly inquisitive Miss Jane Marple. Her work has been translated into more than a hundred languages.

According to her grandson Mathew Prichard , who runs the Agatha Christie estate, she was very keen on using new types of media to help reach fans in new ways. He said this in April 2004 when it was announced that five of her books would be turned into computer games. Her second husband, Max Mallowan, was an archaeologist, and she chronicled her travels with him in the Middle East in her 1946 book "Come, Tell Me How You Live." Her novel, And Then There Were None, is also published as Ten Little Indians and is the #1 bestseller. Although it was not the last novel she published in her lifetime, the last novel that Agatha Christie wrote was Postern of Fate (1973). It featured her re-occurring characters Tommy and Tuppence, and marks their final appearance in a novel. The last two novels published were Curtain (chronicling Hercule Poirot's last case) and Sleeping Murder (the last Miss Marple novel). She wrote both books in the 1940s, and then locked them in a safe deposit box.

It is stated in her biography, that she wrote the two final cases for Marple and Poirot early, in case she was killed in WWII. This way fans would have closure concerning her characters fates. Wrote six romance novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. She is mentioned in Zwei Männer am Herd: Diebe der Liebe (2001). She wrote Hercule Poirot's Christmas for her godson James, (an avid fan of her books)after he complained that her murders were getting too refined. He wanted a good solid murder, with lots of blood, and the body positioned in such a way that it couldn't be anything but murder. There is a dedication to him in the book. Her first husband's brother Campbell Christie was also a writer. She was played by Vanessa Redgrave in Agatha (1979). Redgrave previously played Mary Debenham in Murder on the Orient Express (1974), an adaptation of her 1934 novel of the same name. The titles of Agatha Christie's works are often allusions to phrases or lines found in works by other writers.

"Sad Cypress" (1940) derives from a line in "Twelfth Night" by William Shakespeare. "Evil Under the Sun" derives from a phrase in "Ecclesiastes", an anonymous work from the 3rd century BC. "The Moving Finger" (1942) derives from a phrase in the poetry collection "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" by translator Edward FitzGerald. "Absent in the Spring" (1944) derives from a line in "Sonnet 98" by William Shakespeare. "Taken at the Flood" (1948) derives from a phrase in "Julius Caesar" by William Shakespeare. "The Rose and the Yew Tree" (1948) derives from a phrase used in "Four Quartets" by T. S. Eliot. "The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side" (1962) derives from a phrase in "The Lady of Shalott" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. "By the Pricking of My Thumbs" (1968) derives from a phrase used in "Macbeth" by William Shakespeare.

"Postern of Fate" (1973) derives from a line in "Gates of Damascus" by James Elroy Flecker. Due to being married to archaeologist Max Mallowan, Agatha Christie developed an interest in archaeology herself. She joined him in excavations in Iraq and Syria, and received some training in tasks such as archaeological restoration and reconstructing pottery. Despite her reputation as a crime novelist, Agatha Christie's literary output actually includes works in several genres. The "Tommy and Tuppence" series mostly consists of spy fiction, as do several of her one-shot novels. "The Mysterious Mr Quin" collection includes the supernatural figure of Mr. Harley Quin (Harlequin) and several fantasy and horror elements. "The Hound of Death" short story collection includes tales of horror and magic. "Death Comes as the End" is a historical novel set in Ancient Egypt, and "Star Over Bethlehem" is a collection of religiously-themed stories featuring Jesus, Mary, Satan, etc. Ariadne Oliver, a major character in several novels by Christie, is a self-caricature of Agatha Christie.

She is a mystery novelist with a strong belief in feminine intuition, has a vast familiarity with literary tropes, and several comical eccentricities. Despite Agatha Christie intending "Sleeping Murder: Miss Marple's Last Case" (1976) to be the finale to the career of her long-running character Miss Jane Marple, there is nothing final about the fate of the character. Marple survives the tale and there are no apparent changes in her life. Agatha Christie created several series protagonists during her writing career, but her best known protagonist was Hercule Poirot. He appeared in 33 novels, one theatrical play, and more than 50 short stories He first appeared in "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" (1920) and last appeared in "Curtain: Poirot's Last Case" (1975) which famously features his death. While her fans loved Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie herself was increasingly fed up with her creation. Late in her career, she described him as "an egocentric creep". While it is unclear whether Agatha Christie intended it this way, most of her long-running series and stand-alone novels seem to take place in a shared universe.

She wrote crossover novels such as "Three Act Tragedy" (1934) and "Cards on the Table" (1936) where major characters from various series meet and interact. But Christie also had the habit of reusing various supporting and/or minor characters, which seem to migrate from series to series. Personal Quotes (19) An archaelogist is the best husband a women can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her. I don't think necessity is the mother of invention - invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble. Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend. If one sticks too rigidly to one's principles one would hardly see anybody. Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody. Curious things, habits. People themselves never know they had them. One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one. The best time to plan a book is while you're doing the dishes. One doesn't recognize the really important moments in one's life until it's too late.

It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story. Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing. I specialize in murders of quiet, domestic interest. It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them. Evil is not something superhuman, it's something less than human. Regarding her ability to "grind out" the number of stories she did: "I'm a sausage machine, a perfect sausage machine." On love: It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous, that you realize just how much you love them. On childhood: One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is to have a happy childhood. On experience: We are all the same people as we were at three, six, ten or twenty years old.

More noticeably so, perhaps, at six or seven, because we were not pretending so much then. See also Agatha Christie is born - Sep 15, 1890 - HISTORY.com Agatha Christie is born Publisher A+E Networks Mary Clarissa Agatha Miller, later known as Agatha Christie, is born on this day in Torquay, Devon, England. Raised and educated at Ashfield, her parents’ comfortable home, Christie began making up stories as a child. Her mother and her older sister Madge also made up stories: Madge told especially thrilling tales about a fictional, mentally deranged older sister. Agatha married Colonel Archibald Christie in 1914, before World War I, and had one daughter. While her husband was off fighting in World War I, Christie worked as an assistant in a pharmacy, where she learned about poisons. She began to write on a dare from her sister and produced her first mystery novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), featuring Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, who would appear in 25 more novels during the next quarter century. The novel found modest success, and she continued writing.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) became a bestseller, and she enjoyed phenomenal success for the rest of her life. However, about this time Christie entered a period of emotional turmoil after the death of her mother and a divorce from her first husband. She disappeared for 11 days, eventually turning up at a health spa. Her disappearance was highly publicized, and an expensive government search ensued. She was later criticized for not coming forward with her whereabouts earlier. In 1930, she married archeologist Sir Max Mallowan and accompanied him on expeditions to the Middle East, which became the setting for many of her novels. She created Miss Marple, one of her most beloved detectives, in 1930. All told, Christie wrote some 80 novels, 30 short story collections, and 15 plays, plus six romances under the pen name Mary Westmacott. She was knighted in 1971 and died in 1976, just a year after she killed off Poirot in the novel Curtain: Hercule Poirot’s Last Case.

Poirot received a front-page obituary in the New York Times on August 6, 1975. By the time Christie died, more than 400 million copies of her books had been sold in more than 100 languages. Related Videos Thirty two years from Agatha Christie's death - Agathachristie.net Agathachristie.net Thirty two years from Agatha Christie's death By EDITOR on Saturday 12 January 2008, 17:15 - Permalink Today on January 12, there are 32 years to the date from the death of Agatha Christie, one year after having become a Dame of the British Empire. Christie died "peacfully and gently". " Agatha Christie died on January 12, 1976, after enduring failing health for several years. Her husband wrote in the "Epiloge" to Mallowan's Memoirs that she died "peacefully and gently" and left him with a great loss for "Few men know what it is to live in harmony beside an imaginative, creative mind which inspires life with zest." - Dawn B. Sova, Ph.D.

(Agatha Christie A to Z), 1996. Agatha Christie was born in 1890 in Torquay in England, as Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller. She was educated at home and studied singing and piano in Paris. In 1914 she married Archibald Christie, but then World War I had broken out. Agatha worked as a nurse in a Red Cross hospital in Torquay at that time and that experience was useful later on. Her first book was published in 1920, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. There, readers met Hercule Poirot, the eccentric Belgian detective with the funny-looking moustache. But Agatha's books first attracted attention in 1926 when she publised The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Agatha made news herself when she disappeared for a few days after her husband wanted a divorce. She was soon found to be staying in a hotel under an alias. Her disappearance is still a mystery. She and Archibald divorced in 1928 (he died in 1962). When she was around 40 years old she went on a holiday and visited e.g.

Iraq where she met archaeologist Max Mallowan, who was 14 years younger than her. They married in 1930 and Agatha Christie became Agatha Christie Mallowan. During World War II Agatha worked in the dispensary of University College Hospital in London. She often assisted her husband on excavations, e.g. in Iraq and Syria. Agatha Christie wrote nearly seventy novels in her career and more than a hundred short stories. Her most famous characters are Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, and the latter one was her personal favorite. She also wrote a few books about Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, and in some books there was no particular main character. Agatha Christie also wrote six romantic novels under the name Mary Westmacott. Agatha's plays have also made her famous and her best known play, The Mousetrap, is most likely the best known mystery play in the world. Agatha was the president of the Detection Club. She became Dame Agatha in 1971. Agatha Christie died 12 January 1976, and two years later Max Mallowan died.

End of a mystery: David Suchet puts away Poirot End of a mystery: David Suchet puts away Poirot Actor David Suchet talks about his career playing Agatha Christie's famous detective Hercule Poirot. Post to Facebook End of a mystery: David Suchet puts away Poirot Actor David Suchet talks about his career playing Agatha Christie's famous detective Hercule Poirot. Check out this story on USATODAY.com: CancelSend A link has been sent to your friend's email address. Posted! A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. 4 To find out more about Facebook commenting please read the Conversation Guidelines and FAQs End of a mystery: David Suchet puts away Poirot Mike Snider , USA TODAY Published 4:35 p.m. ET Aug. 1, 2014 | Updated 4:57 p.m. ET Aug.

1, 2014 David Suchet as Hercule Poirot in "Agatha Christie's Poirot." (Photo: Kieron McCarron) 284 CONNECT TWEET LINKEDIN 4 COMMENTEMAILMORE From the grave, the late Agatha Christie seduced actor David Suchet to take the role that would define his career: Hercule Poirot. Suchet had known a little bit about the famous Belgian detective when he was approached about starring in Agatha Christie: Poirot in 1985: He had recently played Inspector Japp to Peter Ustinov's Poirot in the TV movie Thirteen at Dinner. Previous Poirots had often been portrayed comically, and Suchet had no interest in such a treatment. So, before deciding on whether to take the role — which he has played now for 25 years — he returned to the novels written by Christie, who died in 1976, to explore the detective. The acclaimed "Queen of Crime" presented a far more dimensional character who used his "little grey cells" to solve crime, says Suchet.

"I don't have to work out how to play it, all I needed to do was be the Poirot that Agatha Christie actually wrote. So I started to make notes and build a whole file and document on his character solely based on her novels. That made me so excited that I said, 'Yes.'" A quarter century and 70 episodes later, Suchet, 68, has completed his work, which The Guardian has deemed "the definitive Hercule Poirot." The final five installments of Agatha Christie's Poirot have begun airing, with Dead Man's Folly on PBS' Masterpiece Mystery starting Sunday (check local listings). Like last month's The Big Four, the episode will be available to view on PBS.org and on streaming service Acorn TV. (Photo: Acorn TV) And Acorn TV will be the only place to view the last three episodes: Elephants Can Remember (Aug. 11); The Labours of Hercules (Aug. 18); and Curtain: Poirot's Last Case (Aug. 25). At least until later in the year, when Acorn syndicates the episodes to local public TV stations.

The last wave of movie-length episodes reconnects many prominent recurring characters from previous installments, including Capt. Hastings (Hugh Fraser), Assistant Commissioner Japp (Philip Jackson), Miss Lemon (Pauline Moran) and mystery novelist Ariadne Oliver (Zoe Wanamaker). And — spoiler alert! — there's a reason Curtain is truly the detective's final mystery. Ill and bed-ridden for much of the story, Poirot passes away before the case is resolved. "There will be a segment of the American audience that (doesn't) know he dies," Suchet says. "You would think, because it's been on the bookshelves since the 1970s, that people would know. But in England they didn't know. I still have people on my Twitter page saying they cannot watch it, and they won't." Suchet, who has also been an executive producer since 2003, opted to film Curtain first. The story takes place in the same setting as The Affair at Styles, the initial mystery that teamed Poirot and Hastings. "Playing his death in the studio was the most difficult day's filming I have ever had in my career of 47 years," Suchet says.

"It was very, very hard to say goodbye. And I thank goodness now that I made that choice, that (he) died and a few weeks later I was doing another Poirot story. So that made it much easier for me." Reuniting with his fellow actors was a treat, too. "I missed them when they went away," Suchet says. Not all of Christie's stories included the characters of Japp, Hastings and Miss Lemon, and the Christie estate decided the newer productions should stick to the script. Fraser admitted to a bit of nervousness after not playing the character for many years. "But we got back into the old routine very easily, actually," he says of the "classic Holmes and Watson relationship. Originally, when I read the first two or three scripts, I could see there was plenty of depth." Now, Suchet is continuing his accomplished stage career, taking the role of Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest in London's West End. He also has written a book, Poirot and Me, already out in the U.K., and coming to the U.S. after the episodes air.

"I discuss every single episode that I ever filmed, and at the end of the book there's a whole list of my short notes that I carried around with me from my file to remind me of his characteristics while I was on the set," Suchet says. He was outfitted in "armadillo padding" to round out his frame and wore the slick, ornate mustache. "I would manicure and polish my nails and I would dye my hair because Poirot's hair was also dyed," Suchet says. "He wouldn't admit to it. He said what he put in his hair was 'Revive it.' We made my hair black and took out every speck of gray as we got older during the series." As for reports that crime novelist Sophie Hannah is writing a new Poirot mystery, he said he would decline to appear should it be made into a film or TV show. "If there was ever a movie and they wanted to do a remake of one of the stories that I did that would be really great. I would never be in an original screenplay," Suchet says. "I don't want to do that.

I'm Agatha Christie's Poirot." (Photo: Acorn TV) 284 CONNECT TWEET LINKEDIN 4 COMMENTEMAILMORE Read or Share this story: NEVER MISS OUT Life Be a pop culture maven. Get the news, reviews and the juiciest celebrity stories that keep you in the know, Monday-Friday. Agatha Christie Biography Agatha Christie Detailed Biography: Agatha Christie was a very prolific British author of mystery novels and short stories, creator of Hercule Poirot , the Belgian detective, and Miss Jane Marple . Christie wrote more than 70 detective novels under the surname of her first husband, Colonel Archibald Christie . Agatha Christie also published a series of romances under the name of Mary Westmacott , and a children's book. Agatha Christie ( Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller ) was born in Torquay, in the county of Devon, as the daughter of Frederick Alvah Miller , an American with a moderate private income, and Clarissa Miller ( Clarissa Margaret Boehmer ).

The Millers, Agatha 's parents, had two other children: Margaret Frary Miller (1879–1950), called Madge, who was eleven years Agatha Christie 's senior, and Louis Montant Miller (1880–1929), called Monty, ten years older than Agatha . Later, in her autobiography, Agatha Christie would refer to her brother as "an amiable scapegrace of a brother". Agatha 's father died when she was a child. Agatha Christie was at educated home, where her mother encouraged her to write from very early age. With her mother’s encouragement, Agatha Christie had already begun to write both stories and poetry. Agatha had some success with her poems, some of which were published in Poetry Reviews, but fared less well with her short stories, which she regularly submitted without success to various magazines. Agatha began a novel, which she entitled, Snow upon the Desert , and solicited the help of a local author and family friend, Eden Phillpotts. He gave Agatha advice and in due course the novel was submitted to this literary agent in London.

But the interview between the literary agent and the budding young author was not a success and the novel was discarded. At sixteen Agatha was sent to school in Paris where she studied singing and piano. Agatha Christie was an accomplished pianist but her stage fright and shyness prevented her from pursuing a career in music. In her books Agatha Christie seldom referred to music, although her detectives, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple , show interest in opera and Poirot sings in THE ABC MURDERS (1936) a World War I song. Now in her early 20s, Agatha was in considerable demand by any number of young men and in due course, while engaged to someone else, she met and fell in love with a young officer in the Field Artillery, one Archie Christie . On Christmas Eve 1914 Agatha Miller married Archibald Christie , an officer in the Flying Royal Corps who was beginning to earn a reputation as an aviator ace. Agatha and Archie had one daughter, Rosalind Hicks , who was born in 1919. During World War I Agatha Christie worked in a Red Cross Hospital in Torquay as a nurse.

After two years of nursing, Agatha Christie graduated to the dispensary, where she acquired a knowledge of poisons that was to yield dividends in due course. Christie had already considered writing a detective novel, but her sister Madge was dismissive of the idea. Now perhaps encouraged by the proximity of the poison cabinet, Agatha Christie decided to prove her sister wrong. Agatha chose a setting, a country house in a small Essex village, and a method, poison, and most importantly invented a detective, a retired Belgian policeman by the name of Hercule Poirot . With the necessary ingredients in place Christie set to work and wrote steadily until, about half way through, she became stuck. Following family suggestions, Agatha Christie took herself off to a remote hotel in the middle of Dartmoor and immersed herself in her writing, finishing the manuscript within a fortnight in the summer of 1916. Agatha Christie 's husband, home on leave, enjoyed the story, entitled the Mysterious Affair at Styles , and recommended that the manuscript be submitted to Methuen where a friend of his was a director. But Methuen sat on the novel for 6 months before rejecting it, and another publisher was approached with a similar result.

Agatha Christie sent her manuscript to yet a third publisher, The Bodley Head , where it languished. Agatha Christie 's first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles , introduced Hercule Poirot , the Belgian detective, who appeared in more than 40 books, the last of which was CURTAIN (1975). The Christie s bought a house and named it 'Styles' after the first novel. Agatha Christie 's marriage broke up in 1926, and in the same year Agatha Christie 's beloved mother died. It had been during this marriage that Agatha Christie published her first novel in 1920, The Mysterious Affair at Styles . Agatha Christie 's husband Archie Christie had revealed that he was in love with another woman, Nancy Neele , and wanted a divorce. On 3 December 1926 the couple quarrelled, and Archie Christie left their house in Sunningdale, Berkshire to spend the weekend with his mistress. After hearing that her husband had left for Miss Neele 's house, Agatha Christie disappeared for a time.

That same evening Agatha Christie had left behind a letter for her secretary saying that she was going to Yorkshire. Agatha ’s disappearance caused a public outcry, many of whom were admirers of Agatha Christie 's novels. Despite a massive manhunt, there were no results until eleven days later. "I would gladly give £500 if I could only hear where my wife is," said Colonel Archie Christie . Eleven days after her disappearance, Agatha Christie was identified as a guest at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate, Yorkshire where she was registered as ' Mrs Teresa Neele ' from Cape Town. Christie gave no account of her disappearance. Although two doctors had diagnosed her as suffering from amnesia, opinion remains divided as to the reasons for Agatha Christie 's disappearance. One suggestion is that Christie had suffered a nervous breakdown brought about by a natural propensity for depression, exacerbated by Agatha ’s mother's death earlier that year, and the discovery of Agatha Christie ’s husband's infidelity. Public reaction at the time was largely negative with many believing it was all just a publicity stunt, whilst others speculated Agatha Christie was trying to make the police think her husband killed her as revenge for his affair.

The disappearance of Agatha Christie in 1926 was basis for the film Agatha . It was directed in 1978 by Michael Apted. In title role was Vanessa Redgrave as Agatha Christie . Agatha Christie 's divorce was finalized in 1928, and two years later she married the archaeologist Max Mallowan . Agatha had met him on her travels in the Middle East in 1927, and accompanied him on his excavations of sites in Syria and Iraq. Later Agatha Christie used these exotic settings in her novels MURDER IN MESOPOTAMIA (1936) and Death on the Nile (1937). Agatha Christie 's own archeological adventures were recounted in COME TELL ME HOW YOU LIVE (1946). Max Mallowan was Catholic and fourteen years Agatha 's junior; Max Mallowan became one of the most prominent archaeologist of his generation. Of her marriage Agatha Christie told reporters: "An archaeologist is the best husband any woman can have.

The older she gets, the more interested he is in her." Max Mallowan worked in Iraq in the 1950s but returned to England, when Agatha Christie 's health grew weaker. Max Mallowan 's most famous book was Nimrud and its Remains. Agatha Christie 's second marriage was happy in the early years and endured despite Mallowan 's alleged affairs in later life, notably with Barbara Parker whom he married in 1977, the year after Agatha Christie 's death. As already mentioned, Agatha Christie 's travels with Max Mallowan contributed background to several of her novels set in the Middle East. Other novels (such as And Then There Were None ) were set in and around Torquay, Devon where Agatha Christie was born. Christie 's 1934 novel, Murder on the Orient Express was written in the Hotel Pera Palace in Istanbul, Turkey, the southern terminus of the railway. The hotel maintains Agatha Christie 's room as a memorial to the author. The Greenway Estate in Devon, acquired by Agatha Christie as a summer residence in 1938, is now in the care of the National Trust.

Agatha Christie often stayed at Abney Hall in Cheshire, which was owned by Christie ’s brother-in-law, James Watts. Agatha based at least two of her stories on the hall: The short story The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding , which is in the story collection of the same name, and the novel After the Funeral . Abney became Agatha Christie 's greatest inspiration for country-house life, with all the servants and grandeur which have been woven into her plots. The descriptions of the fictional Styles, Chimneys, Stoneygates and the other houses in Agatha Christie ’s stories are mostly said to be Abney in various forms. Agatha Christie 's most prolific period began in the late 1920s. During the 1930s Agatha published four non-series mystery novels, fourteen Hercule Poirot novels, two Jane Marple novels, two Superintendent Battle books, a book of stories featuring Harley Quin and another featuring Mr Parker Pyne , an additional Mary Westmacott book, and two original plays. In 1936 Agatha Christie published the first of six psychological romance novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott .

After visiting Luxor in 1937, where Agatha Christie saw Howard Carter, she wrote the play AKHNATON , which was not published until 1973. Agatha Christie 's play was produced in New York as Akhnaton and Nefertiti in 1979 and next year in London. During WW II Agatha Christie worked in the dispensary of University College Hospital in London. Agatha Christie also produced twelve completed novels. After the war Christie continued to write prolifically, also gaining success on the stage and in the cinema. Witness for the Prosecution , for example, was chosen the best foreign play of the 1954-55 season by the New York Drama Critics Circle. Witness for the Prosecution had opened in London in October 1953 and by December 1954, it was on Broadway. With Max Mallowan Agatha Christie traveled in 1947 and 1949 to expeditions to Nimrud, the ancient capital of Assyria, and in the Tigris Valley.

Among the many film adaptations of Agatha Christie 's work are Murder on the Orient Express (1974), directed by Sidney Lument and with Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot , and Death on the Nile (1978), with Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot . Both films were nostalgic costume dramas. Even the small parts in Murder on the Orient Express were filled by famous stars. According to Billy Wilder, Agatha Christie herself considered his Witness for the Prosecution the best film adaptation of her work. Wilder rewrote Agatha Christie 's dialogue but did not change the clever plot with a surprise ending. Agatha Christie 's characters are usually well-to-do people. Often the comfortable lifestyle of Agatha 's characters are undermined by financial problems, which lead to murder. Although Agatha 's villains use very complicated plans, they are not impossible, but are firmly grounded on the everyday reality. In many stories the reader is fooled to suspect an innocent character, but most innovative was when Agatha Christie revealed the guilty party: it has been the narrator, a group of people, a serial killer who tries to hide an obvious motive for his killing one of the victims, and so forth.

Agatha Christie 's world view was conservative and rational, but there is always a place for accidents: "'...Does it not strike you that the easiest way of removing someone you want to remove from your path is to take advantage of accident? Accidents are happening all the time. And sometimes - Hastings - they can be helped to happen!'"( Dumb Witness 1937). Agatha Christie always gives a logical explanation for crimes, but society is not blamed. Murder is not a sign of degeneration of middle-class values. After the crime is solved, life continues happily. Although Agatha Christie 's writing career spanned over six decades, she was conscious of social change without fixating on the period between the two World Wars. "When I reread those first books," she said in 1966, "I'm amazed at the number of servants drifting around. And nobody is really doing any work, they're always having tea on the lawn." However, Agatha Christie did not like editing her own text and was even reluctant to change the spelling unless a word has actually been misspelt.

By 1955 Christie had become a limited company, Agatha Christie Ltd, which was acquired in the late 1960s by Booker Books. It had already acquired Ian Fleming. To honour her many literary works, Agatha Christie was awarded a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1956. In 1967 Agatha Christie became president of the British Detection Club . When Agatha Christie was asked to be President of the Detection Club in 1958, the only possible successor to Dorothy L. Sayers, she agreed but made it a condition that she should not be asked to speak at its public meetings. Nor, living comparatively far out of London and increasingly aged, did Agatha Christie often attend our gatherings. In 1971 Agatha Christie was made a Dame of the British Empire, three years after her husband was knighted Sir Max Mallowan in 1968 for his archeological work. From 1971 to 1974, Agatha Christie 's health began to fail however Christie continued to write.

In 1975, sensing her increasing weakness, Agatha Christie signed over the rights of her most successful play, The Mousetrap , to her grandson. Agatha Christie died on 12 January 1976, at age 85, from natural causes, at her Winterbrook House in the north of Cholsey parish, adjoining Wallingford in Oxfordshire (formerly Berkshire). Agatha Christie is buried in the nearby St. Mary's Churchyard in Cholsey. Max Mallowan died two years later, but he had married after Agatha Christie 's death an old family friend. With over one hundred novels and over one hundred translations into foreign languages, Agatha Christie was by the time of her death the best-selling English novelist of all time. As Margery Allingham said: Agatha Christie has "entertained more people for more hours at time that any other writer of her generation." Agatha Christie 's only child, Rosalind Margaret Hicks , also died aged 85 in 28 October 2004, from natural causes, in Torbay, Devon.

Agatha Christie 's grandson, Mathew Prichard, was heir to the copyright to some of his grandmother's literary work (including The Mousetrap ) and is still associated with Agatha Christie Limited. Agatha Christie Legacy Agatha Christie died in 1976. Her literary legacy inludes 66 crime novels, 13 plays, as well as 154 short stories, most of which have been published in 16 collections in the UK. A few of Agatha Christie 's stories evaded publication as part of collections and are only available in their original serial form. Agatha Christie also contributed to 3 collaborative detective novels, and under the name of Mary Westmacott wrote 6 romantic novels. All of Agatha Christie 's works published in book form remain in print in UK and the Mousetrap has more than 20,000 West End performances and countless amateur performances. Agatha 's works have been translated into more than 50 languages and published in 70 countries. Christie has sold over 2 billion books and her UK publishes, Harper Collins , expects to sell 600,000 each year.

At least 30 feature films and over 100 TV productions been made. It amazing that Agatha Christie 's first book, Mysterious Affair at Styles , was rejected by 2 major publishing houses, and nearly 6 years were to pass before eventually accepted by John Lane of The Bodley Head . Such a tight deal was struck that Agatha Christie made virtually no money and found herself contracted to offer next 5 novels on terms only marginally better than those agreed for first book. The BBC reported Agatha Christie 's death as follows: Crime writer Agatha Christie dies The most popular novelist in the world, Dame Agatha Christie , has died leaving rumours of a multi-million pound fortune and a final book waiting to be published. The British author, who sold an estimated 300 million books during her lifetime, had been in poor health for several years. Agatha Christie died at her home in Wallingford in Oxfordshire, aged 85.

Two London theatres dimmed their lights this evening - St Martin's where her record-breaking " The Mousetrap " is now in its 24th year and the Savoy, where " Murder at the Vicarage " will have its 200th performance next week. Dame Agatha Christie is believed to have left one last novel, as yet unpublished, featuring one of her most famous characters, the deceptively clever Miss Marple , as well as an autobiography. Newspaper estimates of Agatha Christie ’s fortune vary, but in the late 1950s she was reputed to be earning about £100,000 a year. The hugely successful play Mousetrap - first written as a radio sketch called Three Blind Mice for the 80th birthday of Queen Mary - is said to have made more than £3m. Agatha Christie gave the proceeds to her only grandson, Matthew Prichard. Christie was known to be a shrewd businesswoman, anxious to avoid leaving too much of her personal fortune to the taxman. Agatha once said: "I only write one book a year now, which is sufficient to give me a good income.

If I wrote more, I'd enlarge the finances of the Inland Revenue who would spent it mostly on idiotic things." In 1955 Agatha Christie formed a company, Agatha Christie Ltd and to save its dividends from tax, she later sold 51% to Booker McConnell, a firm best known as sugar giants but also with other investments including authors' copyrights. Agatha Christie 's Will Dame Agatha Christie 's will was published on 30 April 1976 and revealed she had left only £106,683, having managed to dispose of most of her wealth before she died. Agatha Christie left most of her property to her husband and daughter with a number of smaller bequests such as £500 to her gardener, £250 to her secretary and £200 to her garden manager. Sleeping Murder , Miss Marple 's last case, was published after her death. Agatha Christie ’s autobiography was also published posthumously. Her legacy lives on in Torquay, Devon, where her daughter by her first marriage Rosalind Hicks lived until her death in 2004.

Today there is an Agatha Christie museum and a bronze bust of the author at the harbourside. Christie ’s only grandson, Matthew Pritchard, is chairman of Agatha Christie Ltd.

Question: In what year did Agatha Christie die?
Answer: 1976